


who, what, why

by fab_ia



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Character Study, gore mentions, i guess?, it isn't happy, its a study in how fucked up they are, spoilers through episode 47 and miniep 14, this is.... yeah it's different to my usual style but i don't care whatever, violence mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-20
Updated: 2017-06-20
Packaged: 2018-11-16 12:06:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11252850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fab_ia/pseuds/fab_ia
Summary: The SI-5 are dangerous, they're deadly, and they're a unit.





	who, what, why

People often say that Kepler’s too harsh on his crew. That the constant threats, the way they need to walk on eggshells around him is wrong and it's bad.

He would disagree. He would say it's the best way to ensure they do their jobs properly- pain be damned, they have work to do. Sure, they might come away from meetings with bruises around their wrists and blood around their nose, but they're disciplined. They've been trained.

He's proud of his two pet agents- Maxwell and Jacobi, dynamic when alone, deadly when part of a unit.

Jacobi, for his part, admires Kepler- the man's patience and discipline are unrivalled, and he's brilliant. By God, he can charm anyone into talking to him, and the fact he's nice to look at is always a point in his favour, in Jacobi's opinion.

After a sparring session, where his reflexes, nerves and concentration have been tested, Jacobi is always sure to thank Kepler before he leaves.

“Thank you, sir,” he says, and Kepler looks at him for a moment, a glimmer of amusement in his eyes.

“Anytime, Mr Jacobi,” Kepler responds. It's the same almost every time- aside from the times when he only tells Jacobi he ‘could do better’, or the times when he says “good job, Mr Jacobi,” and Jacobi feels a little rush of exhilaration pass through him.

He washes the blood off in the sink at home, looks at himself in the mirror and wonders when it was that he realised the only way to feel alive was through the adrenaline highs he gets from his missions.

The water runs red, his knuckles sting, and he grins at his reflection. Privately, he thinks he's a monster- but then, he doesn't have a problem with that. Not anymore.

There were a few times, back when he first joined SI-5, that he'd had to close his eyes as he pulled the trigger, or look away from the scenes of gore and sheer human brutality that Kepler seems to find himself so at home in.

But now? He obeys without question, cracks a joke as he surveys an area, lets a little grin slip onto his face when he's got a gun in his hand and twelve pounds of C4 in his bag.

Maxwell doesn't have the same relationship with Kepler that Jacobi does, not by a long shot, but the relationship she has with Jacobi is… unique.

Initially, they didn't get along- Jacobi believed she intended to steal his job and place at the metaphorical table, while she was a little afraid of him and his casual demeanour while he carried out acts so vile that most people would heave at the very thought of them.

They bonded, primarily, when she found Jacobi in the changing room by the gym, staring blankly ahead at the wall with his eyes unfocused and hands resting on the ground.

“This is the ladies,” she hissed. He blinked, shook his head, and frowned at her.

“Yeah, I know,” he said. “I didn't expect you to- why do you look so uncomfortable?”

“You're a man.”

Her dismayed expression only deepened when Jacobi laughed, forcing himself to his feet.

“What the hell happened to you?” she asked, eyes widening when she saw the split lip, black eye and dried blood on his neck. Jacobi smirked.

“This? This is nothing. Training accident.”

He'd been Maxwell’s acquaintance ever since, and they'd become friends after a mission together where they saved the others life at least five times.

The dynamic between the three confuses most- the way Jacobi would lay down his life for Kepler is something that makes a lot of people wonder what kind of messed up relationship the two have, but it isn't all like that. Jacobi would die for Kepler, sure, and he'd let the man ruin him, but they don't have any kind of actual relationship.

It confuses the Hephaestus crew, especially considering the first interaction they witnessed between the two was Jacobi preening as Kepler praised him.

Eiffel wonders. They know that Eiffel wonders- he does little to hide his curious stares, his slight frowns whenever Jacobi smirks at one of Kepler's threats. He doesn't even attempt to mask his confusion when Maxwell tells Kepler where he can shove his contingency plans, and how she only laughs as he grabs her wrist and growls into her ear.

“We’re fucked up, Jacobi,” Maxwell says one night, eyes on the star that she can see out of the window. It casts an eerie blue glow around the room, and it would be unsettling if not for its familiarity.

“Nah,” Jacobi says with a little laugh. “We aren't fucked up. We’re monsters.”

Maxwell laughs too, loud and warm when it echoes off of the metal walls of the room.

The hold that Kepler has on the station is strong- he runs a tight ship, and while he can't use the same methods on Minkowski’s crew that he would on his own, he can assign them extra tasks on their off-shifts, and he can threaten them with things both colourful and probably illegal.

The night on the module is one of the first time they're thrown into an unpredictable situation without Kepler there. Jacobi's eyes are wide as he stares at the speaker, the voice coming through familiar and easily recognisable.

His own.

He considers shooting the comms panel. But he doesn't. Lovelace takes his gun, the Other Jacobi dies, and he finds himself in turmoil.

As the contact event draws nearer and nearer, Kepler's temper becomes shorter and shorter, more volatile- explosive. He slams Jacobi against the wall, three nights before, grabs his wrists hard enough to bruise them with his bare hands, leans in, teeth grazing Jacobi's throat.

“Sir, what are you-”

“Shut up,” Kepler growls, and Jacobi obeys. He's quiet apart from his gasping breaths, his groans and slight sounds of pain. Kepler doesn't say anything as Jacobi rakes his nails down his back, close to drawing blood.

Lovelace, for her part, only raises an eyebrow at the new bruises that cover Jacobi's neck and collarbone, but Minkowski can't hide her… disgust?

Disgust.

She's disgusted at him, Maxwell cheerfully tells him.

“She thinks the fact you're fucking your CO is grounds for dismissal,” she says. Jacobi can't help but laugh.

“She does know I was never in the Force, right?”

“I don't think she cares.”

Maxwell finds it pathetic, a little, how eager Jacobi is to please the colonel.

She doesn't find it pathetic when she's got a gun pointed at her head, and Jacobi's about to carry out Kepler's orders and get her shot-

She doesn't find it pathetic anymore.

Jacobi sees red, hears the gunshot ringing in his ears as he grabs his own gun and slams the door open, pushes his way down the corridor in a blind fury.

“Jacobi, stand down.”

He wants to scream, wants to shoot Minkowski, wants to destroy him for what she's done-

But he doesn't. Of course he doesn't. He gives her his gun. He surrenders.

They surrender. Kepler's orders.

And sure, he hates it, he disagrees, but Jacobi's never been one to disobey his superiors. “Yes sir, no sir, three bags full sir.”

The handcuffs bite into his wrists, rubbing them red raw and bloody as he waits, alone, for someone to come to him. For someone to tell him what to do now.

Jacobi has a lot of time to think while he's alone. He doesn't do much, clenches and unclenches his hands as he imagines what it would be like to hold Minkowski’s throat between them, what her dying breaths and gasps would sound like, what he would see in her eyes. Would it be fear? Or just acceptance, accepting that she deserves all the pain Jacobi can inflict on her.

He's shaken out of his contemplation by Eiffel, asking him to come to a funeral. Why he would want that, he isn't sure, and he thinks the glare he shoots Eiffel might tell him that, too.

But there's a funeral after all, and he's forced to go. Jacobi spends the time before anyone says anything staring at Maxwell’s body bag, ignoring Kepler trying to talk to him, trying to get his Jacobi back.

Jacobi was carrying out Kepler's orders when Maxwell died.

Kepler was carrying out his own orders when Minkowski snapped and disengaged the engines, and she could have killed them all with her reckless stupidity.

Daniel Jacobi has never been a man who can easily be frightened, but he can feel nervous, and when he stares at the writhing, gasping body of Lovelace, he feels a spike of ice through his chest. Is that fear, or is it the knowledge of Kepler's deception? The knowledge that Kepler would have- could have- easily let him die on this mission?

The last part isn't true at that point- it comes later, when Kepler says he knew, and Jacobi knows what true betrayal feels like at that moment. His desires change- gone is the thought of Minkowski, replaced instead by the vision of Kepler, red-faced underneath him as Jacobi's hands are painted a deep scarlet-

Lovelace is an alien, that much he knows. But, staring at his hands and seeing how they only shake, he can’t help but feel relieved. He's real. He's the real Jacobi.

“I was scared,” he tells Minkowski, because he was- he was terrified that he was a fake, that he was a lie, he was a liar-

He isn't the liar. Kepler is.

Kepler, with a gun to Eiffel's head, his handcuffs unlocked as he tries his damndest to convince Minkowski to shoot Lovelace in the head.

Jacobi can't help the manic grin that spreads across his face when she twists Kepler's arm behind his back, hearing the grunts of pain that show that Kepler, strong and collected that he is, is still human, still vulnerable. If anything, it's a little amusing.

He doesn't find it as funny when Kepler’s frozen, saying that he can't move, eyes wide with the first show of genuine fear that Jacobi's ever seen from the man.

Kepler's screams echo through the room, and Jacobi can’t tear his eyes away- his hand is gone, there are tears on his cheeks, no colour in his face, and he's panting, gasping, sobbing.

Jacobi feels bad for him, sure, but when they're locked in the brig, Kepler is back to his mask of composure, and he's sick of it.

He demands an explanation. Kepler chuckles. All he does is laugh, and it's enough to raise the tension high enough for Jacobi to snap.

“When did you know?” Jacobi interrupts him, and Kepler frowns a little.

“What?”

“When. Did. You. Know?”

Kepler shifts so he's facing more towards Jacobi as he responds. He looks- not bored, but annoyed. He's annoyed that Jacobi's asking questions, because Jacobi's never asked questions before.

“We don't have time for that.”

The glare Jacobi shoots him could kill, and Jacobi thinks that, given half a chance, he would kill the man sat across from him

“Oh please,” Kepler says. “I didn’t tell you? Big deal. I just lost command of this station. I just lost a hand. And you’re going to sit there and-”

“Yeah, I am,” Jacobi says, because he's had enough of beating about the bush, enough of this constant deception, and he's so close to begging someone for a gun.

“Now, either answer the goddamn question or I’ll tear off your other hand.”

Jacobi doesn't make threats lightly- he doesn't use them as intimidation. No, he only makes a threat when he's ready and willing to follow through on them, which Kepler knows- and that's what makes his face change slightly, betraying the tiniest bit of caution and wariness.

“Why does it matter?” Kepler asks, and Jacobi kind of wants to scream.

“Because-” Jacobi exclaims before cutting himself off and taking a deep breath. Getting angrier isn't going to help him.

“Look. You tell me to blow something up, I blow something up. You tell me to blend in and gather intel, I blend in and gather intel-”

“And when I tell you to drop something-”

That's the one that makes him snap, and Jacobi never was brilliant at controlling his temper. If anything, his ranting is only serving to annoy Kepler.

“Watch yourself,” Kepler says, voice low and dangerous. Jacobi laughs bitterly, eyes narrowed and mouth a slightly lopsided smirk.

“Make me,” he snaps. Because Jacobi is still fucked up from losing his best friend- his sister, and he can't control what he says.

“-you're addicted to gambling with people's lives, and you lost.”

“We didn't kill Maxwell, Jacobi,” Kepler says, and his voice is the gentlest Jacobi's ever heard from him. “Neither one of us did.”

“No,” says Jacobi, because it's true- Minkowski killed Maxwell.

“But one of us sent her into the field and didn’t tell her what she was going up against. I want to know why.”

There's a slight pause before Kepler speaks again, and he's still speaking in that warm tone, trying to stay as gentle as he can.

“There’s always a bigger picture. I had my orders,” Kepler says, because it always comes back to that, always back to the ‘bigger picture’.

Jacobi's sick of it. He wants the conversation to be over- wants to leave Kepler to sit in silence and undoubtedly in pain from his hand- but he doesn't end it.

“That’s it, huh?” Jacobi asks, sighing a little when Kepler doesn't reply.

“All the big talk, but at the end of the day, you’re just the middle link in the food chain.”

He pauses again before he continues, tiny grin on his face.

“I think you’re right, Colonel; there is a big picture. And right now, it’s the first time I’m realizing where you fit into it.”

Silence again. Jacobi doesn't raise his eyes to meet Kepler's, not until he hears the man say “Jacobi,” short and sharp.

“Where the hell do you fit into the big picture, huh? Standing by my side forever? Is that what you want?”

Jacobi doesn't answer. He stares at Kepler, sees the exhaustion in the way he holds himself, the lines around his eyes and the slight downturn of his lips.

“I don't know,” Kepler says. “I don't know what’s going to happen now. But I swear, I will do all I can to make sure we get out of it alive.”

Kepler sounds earnest and sincere, and Jacobi wishes he could believe him.

 

**Author's Note:**

> yes i rushed this it was written pretty much overnight but i don't even care i needed to get it out 
> 
> as ever, my tumblr is @sciencematter, and you can always message me to talk about these terrible men


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